The Old City of Shanghai and Its Markets

Originally posted 9th February 2015

It’s a while since Richard and I wandered around the Old City. We were following a route in one of my tourist guides, which took us quite quickly away from the crowds of the famous Yuyuan Gardens, which I have yet to visit, and down the small backstreets of the city.

 

The people of the old city live their lives out on these lanes - a pair of grannies looked after their grandson, washing was hung out to dry and with many houses having their sinks in the street, much of their domestic lives was on show. It was an untidy, busy and very much alive place. This is traditional Chinese life. There is not much left of it in this rapidly modernising city.

Our tour sent us to the Fuyou Antiques Market, near the pailou or paifang, which marks the entrance to a local community – there is one at the entrance to London’s China town for example. I’m not sure how many antiques in the four-floored market were genuine, but it didn’t matter. It was interesting to wander around. There were old teapots made of china, brass and silver, brass figures – we particularly liked the dragons - turquoise stones and furniture amongst the piles of things for sale.

Outside in the streets there was a shop selling blue and white fabrics that looked Japanese to me, but I think they were locally printed, and more teapot shops.

We went on via the Temple of the Town God (more another time) to the Shiliupu Fabric Market. On our way someone was expertly playing with a drone, making it flip over as it flew and bringing it down to land in front of a dog, which didn’t quite know what to make of it.

At the entrance to the fabric market a man was selling fur hats and as we got closer we realised that the fur he was also selling was that of a Chow Chow. I don’t normally have a problem with fur, I see it to be much like leather. But it was upsetting to see the fur of man’s best friend on sale in the street. There are things I have seen, and this was one of them, that are just too upsetting to photograph.

 Inside the fabric market were three floors of, yes, fabric. Rolls and rolls of the stuff, silk, wool you name it, and made-up garments showing you the type of clothes that they could make – dress, jackets, mens shirts, suits whatever you fancied. I’ll definitely be going back.

The Propaganda Poster Museum

Originally posted 8th February 2015

I've gone on about this long enough in other posts, but haven't got round to writing about it.  Somehow my nice plan of writing in the mornings when the internet over here is fast and then going out in the afternoons on my daily exploratory trip when the internet has slowed as Western Europe wakes up, seemed well thought out but it appears to have gone awry.  Sometimes a trip out requires more than one post, others less. And I hadn't quite thought about those days when I have to do all kinds of domestic stuff such as going with Richard to the Security Bureau (full residency permit - on the other side of town  - took 5 minutes once there) neither you nor I would find interesting to read about.

Anyway back to this little gem of a museum in The Old French Concession of Shanghai.  I

The entrance to Block B

had been warned by various guide books that it would be difficult to find.  Having found a set of really good instructions I didn't find it that difficult, but if you understand that it is in the basement of an ordinary block of flats (Block B in fact) which is one of six in a compound guarded by barriers and security guards (as is usually the case here - I'm not sure what they are all doing, but they sit there all day and night) it might not be so surprising.  The address gives the name of the main road, but if you have been told to "avoid the main entrance and find the back entrance and and just walk in" and past the security barrier and block D (which my directions didn't mention) then block B's basement is a relatively easy find.

I suppose it is in this peculiar place because it is the private collection of one individual who has collected some 6000 posters from 1930's Shanghai to more or less the present day.

Propaganda Poster Museum

It is a small museum, but nonetheless fascinating.  The tour of the rooms starts with the famous posters of the Shanghai Calendar Girls from the 1930s.  They were used for advertising products from cigarettes to medicines and Japanese sake.

 

 

Postcards of Shanghai Calendar Girls

The girls were depicted as sophisticated westernised chinese often wearing the cheongsam (known as the qipao by the Chinese) which was originally a loose-fitting Manchu A-line style dress buttoned at the side introduced by the Qing dynasty rulers.  In the 1920s this was adapted into the tight figure-hugging dress of the Shanghai sophisticates.

 

 

 

 

---

 

The arrival of the Communists in Shanghai

This poster was produced to depict the arrival of the Communists en masse in Shanghai in 1949.  They had been here much earlier - in the 1920s and set up the First National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party on the other side of the French Concession in 1921.  Mao Zedong was there as Hunan's representative.

 

 

Posters were changed

One interesting exhibit shows how posters were changed over time as various people went out of the favour.  This is a depiction of the Founding Ceremony of the New China. The original shows Gao Gang the Vice president of the party on the far fight.  In the top picture he has disappeared.  In a third depiction of this ceremony Liu Shaoqi (third on the left hand side) is replaced by Dong Biwu.

 

 

 

I took a few photos, until I saw the picture asking for no photos to be taken....... and so I bought some postcards in the small gift shop at the end of the Exhibition.

Various postcards

Top left: Parade of Celebrating the Founding of the People's Republic of China (Shanghai)

Top right: Looking for the death 1955. (American imperialism and its relationship with Taiwan and China)

Bottom left: 1971 Red detachment of women.  One of only 8 ballets permissible.

Bottom right: 1961 Shanghai Bund at Festival

 

It was interesting to the see the development of pictorial styles over the years from an aesthetic point of view.  Straight after the revolution they depicted happy families with smiling faces.  As time went on the images became more aggressive.  The Imperialism of America came under frequent attack.  China often set itself targets for over-taking Britain in its output - something which nowadays I find quite bizarre - that even in the 1970s, that was their target over the next 15 years (as it had been 15 years earlier, I may add).

Then there were a few posters from the Cultural Revolution which are denouncements of anyone and everyone.  These aggressive posters of writing were posted all over the place.  When they were finally taken down it was illegal to keep them - all were supposedly recycled - but a few remain in this museum.  In their time they were plastered all over buildings attacking whoever had fallen out of favour that week.

LHS 1989: The Republican flag will wave forever
RHS 1958: Surpass UK in 15 years

The postcard on the left is of a poster from 1989 with doves flying over Tiananmen Square, and the one on the right urging the Chinese to surpass the UK in 15 years time (from 1958).

It's a fascinating place to visit.  It gives a quick overview of the history of the Chinese Communist Party in power in China.

And outside on the streets there are still slogans to be found.  They are no longer paper posters - the ones I saw on my way back to the metro station that day were made of metal, but it was urging the population to act together as one family in the interests of all.

 

Shanghai Transport

Originally posted 7th February 2015

When I visited Mainland China from Hong Kong in the 1980s everyone was riding around on bicycles, except for those inside the odd large government car.

Here in Shanghai, 30 years later, there is still the odd bicycle.  In the Old French Concession, they tend to be modern fancy expensive ones.  Elsewhere they are of the old battered variety - but there are not many of them on the streets.  Shanghai has now grown too big for a simple bicycle to be your only mode of transport.  Some of the bicycles have become motorised, and motorised tricycles with trailers are used for moving recyclable rubbish about the city.

 

and for moving builders materials and tools for example.  The poor picture on the right shows an upside-down step ladder being carried on a scooter.

 

So now those who would have been riding bicycles are now riding scooters.  On the main roads they and the bicycles have their own lanes that keep them separate from the larger vehicles.  The scooters are electric and have a range of 50km.  Recharging happens both at home and work - walking along the pavements you have to watch out for the trip hazard of electric cables running from a building to a scooter.  This range just about gets them around the city for a daily commute, but it does mean that they rarely use their lights to save juice.  This makes them rather dangerous beasts for a pedestrian, as you can't see or hear them coming.  But they are also a rather dangerous beasts for car drivers, as a number of riders seem to flout all traffic laws, riding the wrong way down streets, crossing at pedestrian crossings, driving without lights etc.etc.

 

To keep warm on the scooters many have a quilt cover

 

In the Old French Concession, again, stylish models are a la Mode, but we saw this union jack version in the Old City.

 

 

Down on the underground the first metro line was built in 1993.  Since then it has grown like topsy and it is now the largest system in the world.  It's clean and efficient and at 40p a ride much cheaper than in London.  A Shanghai travel card with its touch technology makes things very quick and easy going through the barriers.  The only hold ups are the ubiquitous x-rays machines that scan every bag at every metro entrance.

 

As far as cars go, the wealthier Chinese tend to be driving around in saloon cars, but there are a significant number of Chealsea tractors - Range Rovers, BMWs etc. with the attitude to match.  The middle upper end of this society is very interested in bling and anodized car wheels seem to fit the bill:

 

and the American School in Shanghai transports its children around in the Chinese version of the US school bus:

.

For the über rich I've so far seen three Rolls Royces, one Bentley, the odd Ferrari and Lamborghini, seemingly endless Maseratis and, yay, one solitary Aston Martin.

---

Postscript:

Just had to add these pictures of what looks like a totally anodized car and a fire engine quad bike seen in Tianzifang that I saw last weekend.

 

Bling car

Fire engine Tianzifang

Some Flowers in Shanghai

Originally posted 6th February 2015

Rosa Galicia Flowers

When I was pottering around in The Old French Concession the other day on my way to and from the Propaganda Poster Museum I came across a couple of the flower shops listed in a Shanghai Guide as the best place to buy flowers in the city. (Which one I don't know, I'm gradually losing the plot).  As I’ve said before I’m a sucker for flowers and am always on the lookout for the best place that’s going to feed my addiction.

The list of 5 included Rosa Galicia Flowers and A Day in Blossom. Both were small

Flower Seller, The French Concession

boutiques in this chic part of town – Rosa Galicia had a good display of what they had to sell,   Blossom specialises in white Orchids, possibly exclusively. I didn’t ask any prices, my gut feel was that here one would have to ask a large amount just to cover your overheads, overheads that the man with his bike-cart further along the street didn’t have to pay. He had a nice selection of blossomed twigs for sale, ready for the Spring Festival in a couple of week’s time (aka Chinese New Year).

So I came away rather dissatisfied. Was that it? Were these some of the best of the best? There are a couple of flower shops around the apartment – one is in the same building as the local Carrefour, but their stock is small and rather uninspiring.

Traditional bird cages

I had heard of the Hongqiao flower and pet market, but hadn’t realized quite how close by it is to our flat. It's only two stops away on the metro after all and I looked on the map and measured it out and it seemed quite easy to do.  I walked there yesterday and regretted it, as it’s not THAT close. The small roads on my map were written in Chinese and what happened on the ground seemed to have little to do with what I had downloaded from the internet.  It took me an hour +  to get there.  And what I found were some animals – the odd goldfish, caged bird, rabbits and mice for sale, home furnishings and décor items, fish bowls, ethnic and art deco style furniture and plants.

Bonsai tree specialist

Outside the main market building were shops selling pot plants and bonsai trees. Inside there were a couple of ribbon sellers and shops selling red items for Chinese New Year.

But in the main there were flowers. Masses of flowers. I saw very little foliage, one box of oasis foam and then just buckets and buckets of flowers. As far as I'm concerned, so far this is the best place to buy flowers in Shanghai.

Hongqiao Flower Market

The main flower market building consists of around six lanes of shops - some specialists, some generalists.

---

Blossoming Trees for Spring Festival

It is just coming up to that time of year called The Spring Festival aka Chinese New Year.   Tree blossom as a herald of Spring plays a significant part.  I saw Azaleas, Chaenomeles (Japanese Quince) and bonzaied cherry trees all in flower in readiness for the festival.

---

Orchid Specialist

Generalist Flower Seller

---

There were specialist sellers such as this orchid seller and then a large number of generalist sellers with a large mixed stock of flowers.

---

I think these are for display at a banquet, but they may be funeral work.  I'm not sure.  But the mechanics were interesting.  A bamboo stand, but no apparent way of collecting the water dripping from the oasis.

Now all I have to do is to learn enough Mandarin to buy what I want and not get ripped off…………

Eating Out: The Liquid Laundry

Originally posted 5th February 2015

We’ve been having quite a lot of meals out since we got to China. It’s not like us at all and it takes some getting used to. We have had meals with Richard’s colleagues, meals with customers and the odd one or two because we wanted to go out and try a particular type of food. We are now living in an area popular with Japanese and Korean ex-pats, so there are a large number of their restaurants and shops around about for us to investigate.   Most of Richard’s western colleagues come into Shanghai on a three week in, three-week back home regime if they come from the UK or for a couple of days if they are travelling up from Hong Kong. They naturally get tired of eating hotel food, so we have been out on the

Chicken Dish with Head

town with them. They tend to head for western food restaurants on Hongmei Lu (a pedestrian street full of western food places) so we have been to a Spanish tapas bar (twice) and a Thai restaurant there, but also a Chinese restaurant in the hotel where we were staying. In the Chinese restaurant we ordered poultry  -both a duck and a chicken dish. The head of the bird came with the rest of the dish, so that one would be able to confirm what one was eating. That’s a little disconcerting. (The same is true if you buy a chicken or duck in the supermarket). One of the recent graduates working out of town in one of the factories as a management accountant is of Indian descent and often seeks out an Indian meal when she comes into Shanghai on a weekend trip.

At the Liquid Laundry

Richard’s been out on the town more often than I have, of course, and has been out to a fancy restaurant on The Bund over looking the Hangpu river. He has also been out with various customers during the week, and at the weekends we have both met up with some customers and their partners for meals out on a more social level. Last weekend we went to the Liquid Laundry, a microbrewery that makes some excellent beer and selling western-style pub food, with a couple who have come out to Shanghai two weeks ahead of us. It was rather dark (so the photos aren’t great), rather loud (so that I could only just hear the conversation) and has a good young vibe. Charlie would love it. This weekend we shall be off to a Beijing (Peking) Duck restaurant with another customer. So many people are taking a lot of trouble to make us feel that we are settling in well and are at the same time introducing us the wide variety of food available here.

Brewing Kettles at The Liquid Laundry

The Franck Restaurant

Last week the firm’s local lawyer (an American from Brooklyn of Italian descent who lives in Shanghai with his Cantonese wife whom he met in Hong Kong) took us out to a superb French restaurant in the Old French Concession. A little corner of France with excellent French bread, wine and food – I had Bourride for example, Richard had Confit de Porc with Chou (actually Brussels Sprouts, but it didn’t matter) - and waiters with French attitude to match.

Farine Boulangerie

It doesn’t feel appropriate for me to be whisking my camera out on many of these occasions, so little of the food we have eaten has been recorded, but I did go back to the French Concession yesterday to visit the Propaganda Poster Museum (the subject of another blog post) and managed to take some photos of the outside of the French Bistro, Franck's, and the inside and outside of his very expensive Café-cum-Boulangerie, Farine,

Franck's Bread

where I bought the most expensive bread I have ever bought, an espresso and a mini cake. Western-style living is possible in Shanghai and many live it. But it comes with a big city price tag. One can eat much, much more frugally if one eats as the locals do, which we enjoy doing when we are out on our own or back in the flat and cooking for ourselves.

Settling In

Originally posted 2nd February, 2015

We moved into our flat last Wednesday and since then we have been on a mission to equip it with essentials.  It is basically furnished, but had no pans, quilts, linen, and very little in the way of crockery and cutlery.  So we have been out spending money at both Carrefour and IKEA.  Whilst IKEA serves a useful purpose, the process of buying anything at the Shanghai branch is as deeply unedifying as at any other IKEA certainly in the UK, and I presume all over the world.  It's a blessed nuisance having a lymphoedemic arm as I can't carry anything heavy, so I have either had to go back a number of times during these past few days or have Richard help me, so we have been going to the shops together after he has finished work, as well.  Luckily both establishments are open until 10pm.

Our flat is on the 17th floor (of 18).  The view from our kitchen window and the balcony alongside is one that looks directly down the Gubei road:

The view from the front of the flat is less inspiring, although there are some nice palm trees in the gardens below.

As you can see there are a lot of tower blocks around us.  There are a lot of tower blocks in Shanghai, full stop.  This city is home to 24 million people.  That's just under 37% of the population of the whole of the UK.  In ONE city.  Londoners complain that their city is overcrowded.  Looking at things from out here, one thinks that the UK's capital dwellers just need to get a grip and go up.  Shanghai is however built on the soft alluvial soils of the Yangtze river delta and the city is sinking.  Shanghai is going down. It has sunk 6 feet since 1921.  And I presume with the accelerated growth, the rate of sinking is increasing.

Anyway back to moving in.  Fortunately we have a rice cooker and microwave as the sum total of our "oven" is a hob with two large gas burners ready for wok cooking and a steamer (duly bought).

We have plenty of storage - much more than we can fill with the stuff from our 7 suitcases and we have two extra rooms, as both balconies (one on each end of the flat) are enclosed and act as utility rooms with laundry maids hanging from both balcony ceilings and a washing machine and dryer on the balcony on the kitchen side.

I have not lived for anytime in another country before and it strikes me that there is an awful lot of paperwork processing going on.  We applied for visas for our stay in the UK.  But those are only temporary ones.  We needed local residency forms from staying in the Hotel and we then had to go to the local police station within 24 hours of moving in to each register for another  temporary residence registration form (TRRF), together with the lease agreement for the flat.  I've already talked about our medicals.  Work permits are being obtained for Richard by a UK firm that dealt with the process in the UK before we arrived and now doing more of the same over here. On Wednesday we have to go for a formal interview for our residence permit application and then in two or three weeks after that we should find out if we are permitted to stay for the full year. I've probably missed something out, or got something wrong in recounting all this.  You can see why.

We both carry pictures of the address of the flat on our phones and for added measure a photograph of the neon sign for "Golden Street" just across the road which all the taxi drivers have so far recognised and used to get us home.  The metro closes before 11pm, so we are bound to use them if we go out anywhere in the evenings.  A ride across town costs about £3.  Something else London could learn.